Georges Prêtre conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra at its New Year concert in 2010.
Photograph: Lilli Strauss/AP

When Georges Prêtre, who has died aged 92, conducted the opening bars of his first opera, Saint-Saëns’ Samson et Dalila, they were disturbed by rustling sweet papers. He turned on the offenders with a loud “Non!”, broke his baton in two and hurled the pieces into the audience. This led to a renewal of his contract and, in 1950, to marriage with the opera house director’s daughter, Gina Marny.

This debut came at the Marseille Opera in 1946. He was still directing the Vienna Philharmonic in its New Year concerts in 2008 and 2010, and in Paris in 2013.

From Marseille he went to the opera houses in Lille and Toulouse, and he looked back on those years with affection and gratitude, since they gave him what young conductors nowadays do not have: the opportunity to learn and make mistakes away from the glare of publicity, and to benefit from the family atmosphere that, in his view, opera houses ceased to enjoy once productions became star-led, with jet travel reducing rehearsal times to a minimum.

In 1955 he was appointed conductor at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, and the following year introduced Richard Strauss’s Capriccio to France, both a French version and a German one – with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf as the countess. On the strength of this, Herbert von Karajan asked him to conduct the opera in Vienna, which he did to great acclaim on two hours’ rehearsal, and in 1999 he was thrilled to be able to record it with Felicity Lott as the countess.

In 1958 Prêtre conducted Maria Callas’s first gala concert in Paris. They developed a close working relationship: she no doubt respected his devotion to hard work and his belief that, while authority in a conductor is crucial, it needs to be exercised gently. Prêtre objected to the title chef d’orchestre for this reason, and said that between Callas and himself there was understanding and as a result, “something happened”. She figures in two of his own three favourites among his recordings, of Carmen, with Nicolai Gedda, and of Tosca, with Carlo Bergonzi and Tito Gobbi. His other favourite was Gustave Charpentier’s Louise, with Ileana Cotrubas and Placido Domingo.

Prêtre’s other great collaborator was Francis Poulenc, and at the end of his time at the Opéra-Comique, in 1959, he conducted the premiere of the composer’s phone conversation opera, La Voix Humaine. He believed that the French did not appreciate their own composers enough, and worked tirelessly to promote French music at home and abroad, and on disc. Poulenc found in Prêtre a conductor whom he could trust, and the recordings that emerged from this friendship, notably La Voix Humaine with Denise Duval and the Concerto for Two Pianos with Jacques Février, have become classics: Prêtre even expressed irritation that Poulenc would never offer advice at rehearsal, instead contenting himself, after the recording was over, with sharing a bottle of the best champagne.

From the Opéra-Comique, Prêtre went to the Paris Opera. When, in 1970-71, he served as general music director of the two Paris houses, the money available did not allow him to fulfil his plans. After that his relationship with Paris remained a slightly wary one. He was the obvious choice to conduct the inaugural concerts for the Bastille Opera House in 1989, but the capital’s appetite for the new and the shocking meant that he was careful to limit his operatic appearances to ones where he knew and trusted the producer.

Nonetheless, he returned to the Bastille for Puccini’s Turandot in 1997, and for his 80th-birthday concert in 2004.

In the meantime he was much in demand on the international scene, both in the opera house – having made his debuts at Covent Garden, La Scala in Milan, the Metropolitan in New York, and in Salzburg in the 1960s – and also for concerts, especially for the grander works in the French repertoire such as Debussy’s La Mer and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé. From 1962 onwards he appeared with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Prêtre believed to only a limited extent in the concept of national style in orchestras. In his view, any conductor worth his salt ought to be able to get an orchestra to play as he wants it to, and he was particularly warm in his praise of the Covent Garden orchestra for its superb technical basis. From 1985, he was principal guest conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.

Born in Waziers, near Douai, in the north of France, Georges was the son of Jeanne (nee Dérin) and Emile Prêtre. At the age of eight he entered the conservatoire in Douai. When he went to the Paris Conservatoire in his teens, he was, by his own admission, stronger on the trumpet than on the piano; although he claimed to have chosen the trumpet because it was the cheapest instrument, many would see in it a perfect vehicle for his energy and outspokenness.

Through his early passion for opera, he was guided by the Belgian conductor André Cluytens towards a career on the rostrum. Both there and as a negotiator – especially of rehearsal time – he could be tough, though his early experience in provincial France taught him a measure of patience. Just as he forgave Callas her high notes in the cause of dramatic truth, he could be forgiven his occasional over-energising of the music, since it was done with such conviction. His ability to exist on three hours’ sleep for weeks at a time left friends and colleagues exhausted.

He is survived by Gina and their daughter, Isabelle. Their son, Jean-Reynald, died in 2012.